Displaying items by tag: clay

Brazil: thyssenkrupp Polysius has secured a front-end engineering design contract from Circlua for the construction of the world’s largest activated clay plant, with a capacity of 0.96Mt/yr (3000t/day). The plant will be largely powered by renewable electricity, and will be located in Pará, utilising clay sourced from the Carajás iron ore complex. The clay contains up to 80% kaolinite content, and will be upcycled as supplementary cementitious material.

thyssenkrupp Polysius CEO Christian Myland said “We are honoured to partner on this landmark project. Leveraging high-quality local clay and our advanced activated clay technology, this plant will set a new benchmark for carbon-conscious cement production.”

UK: A new study by the Mineral Products Association (MPA), supported by Innovate UK, has found that incorporating reclaimed clays and finely ground brick powder into cement production can reportedly lower the embodied CO₂ by up to 3%. The materials are used as calcined clay in the cement production process. The project aims to offer a viable alternative to fly ash and ground granulated blast-furnace slag, as resources diminish due to the steel industry's decarbonisation efforts.

MPA director Diana Casey said "Using discarded bricks and reclaimed clays will not only lower carbon and reduce the amount of materials sent to landfill but has the potential to create a whole new market if these clays become widely used in the construction industry, helping to retain economic value in the UK, secure jobs and attract investment."

Germany: France-based Fives has won a contract to build a 50t/day clay calcination unit at Rohrdorfer’s Rohrdorf cement plant in Bavaria. The unit will integrate into the plant’s clinker line in order to allow it to test the production of limestone calcined clay cement with up to 40% reduced CO₂ emissions. Fives’ clay calcination unit uses a flash calcination process, based on a three-stage preheater, flash calciner and decolourisation system.

Rohrdorfer’s Net Zero Emissions Labs team is responsible for the project to decarbonise the Rohrdorf cement plant by 2038. Its managing director Helmut Leibinger said “After a detailed technical review, we decided that the flash calciner with an integrated clay calcination unit from Fives FCB was the best solution in terms of reliability, efficiency and colour control. We are confident that the unit will be essential in moving forward on our pathway to net zero.”

Vietnam: The Vietnamese Ministry of Construction has recommended that Long Thanh Cement receive a mining licence for clay mines T51 and T52 Nui Nghe. The licence allows for an extraction capacity of 1.1Mt/yr of clay. This initiative aims to provide a stable supply of clay materials for the Long Thanh cement plant in Ha Nam province, which is undergoing expansion from 0.91Mt/yr to 2.3Mt/yr. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment reports that these clay mines have a claystone reserve of 4.33Mt and a sandstone and siltstone reserve of 1.6Mt viable for cement production.

France: Neo-Eco has developed a low-carbon cement binder from clay excavated during the Grand Paris Express project. The process, developed at IMT Nord Europe, involves flash-calcination at about 700°C, allowing it to replace part of the clinker and emit approximately five times less CO₂ than traditional methods. Neo-Eco's director, Christophe Deboffe, said that this new ingredient could constitute 30% of cement, maintaining the cost similar to traditional binders.

To commercialise this breakthrough, Neo-Eco established Neocem, a subsidiary based near Lille. Neocem has raised €23m to build a production plant in Saint-Maximin, Oise. Strategically located near waterways and Île-de-France, the plant will directly receive excavated materials from the Société du Grand Paris.

Starting in 2025, the facility will produce 100,000t/yr of flash-calcined clay, with potential to double its capacity in the future. Deboffe sees this as just the beginning, planning to establish more plants across France and Europe to meet the cement and ready-mix concrete industry's demand.

The clay supply is estimated to exceed 100Mt, ensuring a sustainable and ample source for the binder.

The facility is supported by the French government's ‘Première usine’ initiative under the France 2030 investment plan, with funding from investors like Bpifrance and CB Green. CB Green, based in Calais, is also developing a limestone filler production plant in Dunkerque with Ecocem, pointing to a future where cement could be composed equally of flash-calcined clay, limestone filler, and clinker. Bottom of Form

France: NeoCem plans to build a €50m clay calcination plant at Saint-Maximin, Picardy. The company recently raised €23m in investments in its Series A funding round. The Le Journal des Enterprises newspaper has reported that the Saint-Maximin plant will enter operation in 2025, and will subsequently grow to 200,000t/yr in capacity. NeoCem aims to employ 100 people by 2030.

Head of industrial deployment Guillaume Luu said “To be used in concrete, limestone must be heated for several hours at 1400°C. Our clay-based binder generates CO₂ emissions of 120kg/t, compared to almost 1000kg/t of limestone binder, and our technology can transform all types of clays available. The idea is not to open new quarries, but to give a second life to materials already on the surface." He continued “The up-cycling of clays and their transformation into a low-carbon binder addresses several challenges for the construction sector. On the one hand, the reuse of clay waste, and on the other hand, the decarbonisation of the building materials sector.”

Nepal: The Cement Manufacturers Association (CMA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Department of Mines and Geology and non-governmental organisation Technology and Action for Rural Advancement (TARA) for the adoption of limestone calcined clay (LC3) cement in Nepal. The parties say that LC3 cement can reduce CO₂ emissions by 40% and reduce coal consumption in cement production. Enewspolar News has reported that the Swiss Development Cooperation has previously supported the diffusion of the technology in the global cement sector.

Germany: Rohrdorfer Zement has fired up a pilot clay tempering unit at its Rohrdorf cement plant in Bavaria. The project has received Euro8.65m in funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the EU. It is one of a number of industrial projects under the EU’s Euro800bn NextGenerationEU post-Covid-19 economic recovery instrument. Sources of heat for the pilot unit at the Rohrdorf cement plant include waste heat from the plant’s clinker line. If the pilot succeeds, the introduction of tempered clay into cement production at the site will follow. This will entail the construction of an on-site full-scale clay tempering plant. Rohrdorfer Zement says that this would reduce the plant’s CO₂ emissions by 16 – 18%, or by 30% if it achieves carbon neutral clay tempering through the use of green hydrogen.

Rohrdorfer’s dedicated Net Zero Emissions Labs team is working to turn the Rohrdorf cement plant carbon neutral by 2038. Other initiatives include the installation of carbon capture systems at the Rohrdorf plant and another in Austria, and participation in the H2-Reallabor Burghausen hydrogen partnership.

Regarding the latest pilot, Rohrdorf Net Zero Emissions Labs project leader Helmut Leibinger said “As a cement component, tempered clays make a significant contribution to CO₂ mitigation. With the pilot project of process-integrated tempered clay, we are taking not just a step in our decarbonisation roadmap, but a leap.”

France: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies and the Scientific and Technical Centre for Building (CSTB) have extended their current strategic partnership for a further three years. The partners plan to assess current and future technologies, in particular with regard to clay-based cement technologies, such as Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies’ H-EVA and H-P2A cement products.

Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies co-founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann said "We are convinced that our extended partnership and shared planning will keep on providing us with optimised timeframes for certifying our promising future clay-based technologies, such as H-EVA and H-P2A. We look forward to bringing these new technologies to market, as they, like our current technologies, benefit from very strong interest."

Switzerland/UAE: The COP28 UAE Presidency named École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) among its Energy Transition Changemakers in the Heavy Emitting Sectors category. EPFL won the prize for its LC3 limestone calcined clay cement, which replaces 50% of clinker content with calcined kaolinite clay and limestone. LC3 cement reduces CO₂ emissions by 40% compared to ordinary Portland cement (OPC), and is a readily available solution that can be scaled worldwide. EPFL noted the special importance of LC3 cement for CO₂ reduction efforts in developing countries, and sees it as having the potential to eliminate 500Mt/yr of global CO₂ emissions by 2030. In a post to LinkedIn, the LC3 Project said that nine plants around the world currently produce LC3 cement, with a further 20 planned before 2025.